Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S272402AbTHEDEn (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Aug 2003 23:04:43 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S272401AbTHEDEm (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Aug 2003 23:04:42 -0400 Received: from almesberger.net ([63.105.73.239]:52998 "EHLO host.almesberger.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S272390AbTHEDEi (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Aug 2003 23:04:38 -0400 Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 00:04:22 -0300 From: Werner Almesberger To: David Lang Cc: "Ihar 'Philips' Filipau" , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: TOE brain dump Message-ID: <20030805000422.S5798@almesberger.net> References: <20030804223800.P5798@almesberger.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: ; from david.lang@digitalinsight.com on Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 06:46:36PM -0700 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2492 Lines: 65 David Lang wrote: > exactly, Alan is saying that the hardware optimizations aren't nessasary. Eventually, you'll want them, and if it's only to lower the chip or pin count. > putting an Opteron on a NIC card just to match the other processors in > your system seems like a huge amount of overkill. you aren't going to have > nearly the same access to memory so that processor will be crippled, but > stil cost full price You might be able to get them for free ;-) Just pick the rejects where the FPU or such doesn't quite work. Call it amd64sx :-) But even if you get regular CPUs, they're not *that* expensive. Particularly not for a first generation design. > (and then some, remember you have to supply the thing > with power and cool it) Yes, this, chip count, and chip surface are what make me feel queasy when thinking of somebody using something as powerful as an amd64. > as long as tools are written that have the same command line semantics the > rest of the complexity can be hidden. You want to be API and probably even ABI-compatible, so that user-space demons (routing, management, etc.) work, too. > and even this isn't strictly > nessasary, these are special purpose cards and a special procedure for > configuring them isn't unreasonable. I'd think thrice before buying a card that requires me to change my entire network management system - and change it again, if I ever decide to switch brands, or if the next generation of that special NIC gets a little more special. > I'm saying treat the one machine with 10 of these specialty NIC's in it as > a 11 machine cluster, one machne running your server software and 10 > others running your networking. You can probably afford rather fancy TOE hardware for the price of ten cluster nodes, a high-speed LAN to connect your cluster, and a switch that connects the high-speed link to the ten not-quite-so-high-speed links. Likewise for power, cooling, and space. And that's still assuming you can actually distribute all this. - Werner -- _________________________________________________________________________ / Werner Almesberger, Buenos Aires, Argentina werner@almesberger.net / /_http://www.almesberger.net/____________________________________________/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/